Saturday 13th August - Ooo err, What happened there?

 I have just deleted yesterday's post as the formatting for the blog seemed to have gone crazy, and somehow yesterday's post and the day before's were somehow overwritten on top of each other.

Deleting yesterday seems to have solved the problem.

But time and tide wait for no man, and you will never find out about yesterday...

I woke up at 4am this morning, and crept down stairs and out into the back garden without switching on any lights to try and save my night vision.

Luckily the full moon was still just to the side of the house, but it was still pretty light, light enough to see the flowers in the border. After a while more stars became visible as I became accustomed to the darkness, and eventually I SAW A SHOOTING STAR, a single bright silver-white streak across the sky!

That was the only one; I didn’t stay out long because star gazing is jolly hard on the neck muscles. I expect I could have spent longer outside if I had brought a blanket out to be able to lie down, but neither the hard paving nor the prickly dry grass seemed like comfortable options. I wonder if you can buy specially designed star-gazing camp chairs? Probably one of those loungers that capsize when you try and get out of them would be a possibility.

I have had this as an ear-worm for several days now; but a lovely ear-worm all the same. 'Moon and stars' is the bit that has got stuck, like a needle on a record.

 Today is another day of seeking out cooler spots. One cat is almost invisible at the back of a flowerbed close to the house; her fur is exactly the same colour as the earth. The other laboriously oscillates between ‘her chair’ and the floor by the piano. The current afternoon spot for humans is outside in the shade where a breeze comes around the corner of the house, not too far from the fridge.

Friday 23rd July - The Consequence of A Disturbed Night's Sleep

 Every so often I have what I call 'a non-sleeping night'. So then I listen to the World Service, or a podcast, or a talking book, or some music. I use my mp3 player, or my Kindle Fire, and have become reasonably adept at squinting at the screen to read the text without putting my glasses on, and remembering which buttons do what.

Last night was the second one of these nights in a row.

Early this morning, at about 3.15 am, a trip to the bathroom became unavoidable. Before I went back to bed, I cautiously navigated my way, in the dark, to the spare bedroom window, dodging the clothes airer, the bathroom scales and several boxes which I knew were in the way. 

I could make out the stars, and even had the idea that I might have seen a shooting star or two, so then I tiptoed back into our bedroom, managed to find my glasses, and went down stairs, all without waking my Best Beloved from his Beauty sleep.

It was hot everywhere in the house, but once I had gone out into the back garden the air was cool, but not cold. Leo the cat came out with me, looking confused, and we sat together for about quarter of an hour, staring up at the stars, and, yes, the occasional shooting star. (MacCavity was Out)

They are a bit annoying to watch for; the skies round our way are not very dark, so it is more a case of 'knowing that you have just seen one' rather than actually watching one streak across the sky as in the photographs. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid#Meteors

There was one star, much bright than all the others, but tellingly it seemed to be heading directly towards the airport so I guess that was a plane pretending to be a star.

However I have spent most of today just about unable to do anything more taking than read a book, play Freecell and make cups of tea or coffee. But since the Summer Holidays have started and I won't be doing any more teaching until September, who cares! 

Sunday 20th December - Advent at home - 4

 

The is the last of the four 'Advent at Home' posts - to see posts from the other participants, go to Angela Almond's blog Tracing Rainbows 

I've been using poems from the Advent Book group I joined, taken from Carys Walsh's Advent book 'Frequencies of God'

This week's theme is 'Birthing', starting with the poem 'The Un-born' by R S Thomas;

The Un-Born – R S Thomas 

I have seen the child in the womb,

neither asking to be born

or not to be born, biding its time

without the knowledge of time,

model for the sculptor who would depict

the tranquillity that inheres

before thought, or the purity of thought

without language. Its smile forgave

the anachronism of the nomenclature

that would keep it foetal. Its hands

opened delicately as flowers

in innocency’s garden, ignorant

of the hands growing to gather them

for innocency’s grave.

Was its part written? I have seen

it waiting breathlessly in the wings

to come forth on to a stage

of soil or concrete, where wings

are a memory only or an aspiration. 

I too, have seen a child in the womb, my own, twice, back in the 1980s. We were given polaroid pictures of what looked like stars in the night sky. It took faith and determination to form the curled outline out of the baby from the apparently random shapes in the picture. Scans are much clearer these days...

 This evening I looked out to see if I could see ‘the Advent Star’; formed by the conjunction of Saturn and Venus, lined up together to make a brighter spark in the darkness. (Look for the moon, track right, and down a bit, and there it is!) I was lucky this evening, and there were even radiant lines shooting out from the star.

 In a time like this, when so many hopes, dreams and plans have been disrupted by the pandemic, going back to the small centre of things is a way of getting through. I saw this posted on Twitter this morning... 

(written by Christian Aid Scotland)

Thursday 12th November - Catching up with Drawings

 Today it was still dark when we opened the curtains - darker than this, maybe. The crescent moon was lying there, looking as sleepy as I felt, and below, the Morning Star (Venus) twinkling away. Worth waking up for. Then, a minute later, when I wasn't watching, a huge black cloud had materialized and blotted out the whole sky. I felt totally justified in going back to bed. 'Nothing to see here, folks'.

  

I'd got a day behind with drawing, so filled an empty page with a rough 'Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn' sketch, partly to remind myself of what Spring and Summer were, once Winter has properly set in. 

A pile of Autumn leaves; rather blurred and out of focus; I quite like the effect. It isn't as though I had put much detail into the drawing in the first place. I sort of arranged greens and browns and reds and oranges into a pile, and added the leaves once the paint was dry. 

Sunday 1st November - More stars

 I managed to ink up my linocut

I am SOOOOO pleased! 

I shall want to redo them, no that I have tried out using the cutting blades, and seen how they turn out.

The two fuzzier prints are monoprints which I made at the end to use up the left-over ink. I shall save them to guide my thinking when I redo the lino prints later.

I also chalked a star onto the path outside our house;

I'm hoping to keep this up through November. A friend has given me a tin of chalk stubs from her craft cupboard to get me started; I'm hoping a couple of boxes of pavement chalks will arrive soon.

It has been raining for the past couple of hours... that patch of tarmac should be all cleaned off by tomorrow. 

 

Tuesday 11th August - Hottest Day of the year - maybe

 Every day since before the weekend I seem to have headed up my diary entry with 'that was the hottest day this year'. Seems like it might be the same heading tonight. 

The other day, the room thermostat was showing  'temp 31 degrees C; target temp 21 degrees C'

So we are saving a lot on the heating bills at the moment...

Leo is just sleeping all day, mostly on a dining chair. Occasionally she switches places and lies just in front of my new standing desk (very inconvenient) or under the piano stool (no better).

McCavity is convinced that grooming cools her down, and comes miaowling around a couple of times a day. She might be right - we are brushing out a lot of fine hair from her thick coat.

I did try to help her by wiping her ears, face and paws with a damp cloth, but she didn't care for that.  

The other night I was awake at 1 am and went downstairs to see if I could see the meteor shower. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. It was reasonably clear, and I saw what was like a sudden sparkle or flashy way up high. I couldn't find the energy last night (although I did wake at the right sort of time). 1 might try tonight/tomorrow morning - it was wonderfully cool sitting in the garden - but I think I will try and remember to take my glasses if I do; maybe that will help me in my meteor spotting. 

I'm still painting every day... 

ah, this is appears to be a retrospective;

today, 11th Aug 

Gerberas, a present from some delightful children I teach. They are struggling having been over-watered, under-watered, kept inside, given too much sun, but you have to admire their will to survive. 

Monday 10th August

This is a friend's garden - I went round for tea in the morning and we sat on the 'Upper Terrace'; her garden is a similar size to ours but terraced, and is delightful, especially this area. I am a great fan of having different places to sit at different times of the day. We have three; 'always in the shade', by the shed, 'dappled shade' under the apple tree which is a bit waspy now as most of the apples have dropped, and 'by the patio door' which must be like an oven now - it's shady in the morning, good for afternoon coffee in spring and autumn but now.... no way.

Anyway, here's the friend's garden; 

Sunday 9th August

I've been experimenting with painting larger pictures, using a bigger brush with very long hairs; these are roses, just in case you can't tell.

On Saturday 8th we went out early, once again to Ditchling beacon. It was ok when we got there but rapidly warmed up - hotted up? heated up?

I sat under the shade of a hawthorn with this view in front of me;

while He went off for a walk (don't worry, it was several hours before midday) to a point in the distance, uphill and downhill and so on;

You see those two clumps of hawthorns on the left? You might make out a bit of a zig zag path to the distant right of them; and then further on there's a sort of 'end of the hills' before you get to the far distance, oh, don't worry trying to work it out. It was a couple of miles anyway.

I filled in the time while I could see his hat (with him under it, of course) bobbing along towards me in the distance by doing some flowers and stuff. Some are real, some are picked and stuck in.

And here's Friday 7th August. I sat in the doorway of the patio doors, in the shade because it was still morning, and painted what was in front of me